


Tin and Straw

by FiaMac



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Dean Winchester Deserves Nice Things, Dean Winchester Has Issues, Episode: s15e02 Raising Hell, Gen, Headspace, Implied Destiel - Freeform, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Sam and Cas Mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23954767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiaMac/pseuds/FiaMac
Summary: Dean Winchester has never felt like a real person.He falls deeper into his father’s mold, clinging to any sense of self. Hiding what he is in plain sight. Juggling false identities and carefully not thinking about when the last time even was that he spoke his real name aloud. Not even bothering to sleep some nights because it’s easier to just move on to the next job, be someone else entirely by the time the sun comes up.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Tin and Straw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oceaxe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaxe/gifts).



> I, of course, dedicate my first Supernatural fic to you, oceaxe.

He had a childhood before this, but he forgets what it was actually like.

Sometimes he closes his eyes and tries to paint pictures in his mind. The stuffed rabbit, with its black-thread nose, which sat on a shelf by his bed. Christmas lights, naptime, and a birthday cake with green balloons. But the memories keep thinning, flattening, and now he isn’t sure of anything.

Was it real?

Or is he just pretending that something else existed before? When mom was alive and life made sense. When he had a home, with soft blankets and toys in the yard. Exchanged, now, for new towns and new faces every few months. Hotel rooms that seem built out of paper and plastic. No possessions but what can fit in an old duffle. Thrift store clothes that smell like other people for weeks before he’s able to wash the odors out.

Most of the time, he’s almost certain that it was true. He had a family. Mother, father, baby brother that he wasn’t exactly happy about, but it was okay because mom and dad said he wouldn’t have to share his room.

Mom is gone now, but Sammy is still just a baby, and Dean has to grow up fast to fill the gap. If he doesn’t get to be a child anymore, does that mean he can’t really be a son, either?

But he isn’t, is he? Not a son. John Winchester doesn’t need another kid, he needs a soldier. Marching along, watching their six. Holding the position and taking orders from a distant voice over the phone.

Weeks go by, and sometimes he forgets what his dad looks like, until a tall man shows up at the door, and Dean thinks, _oh, that’s right, that’s him_.

Sam is his only constant, his grounding wire. Take care of Sammy—his mission, with no choice but to accept it. But he will, he’ll take it. It’s the only thing that’s _his_. Even though it means surrendering his individuality and any dreams of what he wanted for himself. Losing the clear definition of _brother_ to become _father_ , _mother_ , _teacher_. It’s worth it for that comfort of purpose.

It’s not always easy, but failure is not an option. Failure means getting stripped of his duties. That, too, is not an option.

Learning the truth about monsters is an unwelcome addition. It shatters all his naïve confidence, this knowledge of a hidden world, throwing everything he thought he knew about reality into doubt.

Going to school, walking among people who don’t know what he knows, don’t see what he’s seen. Are they all delusional? Or delusions themselves? Which world is the real one?

But the soldier keeps marching.

Maybe, yes, he falters. Once. Allows himself to pretend for two glorious months that he is someone—something—else. A real boy. With a proud father, friends his own age, and a pretty date for the school dance. Normal. With no greater responsibility than homework and after-dinner chores.

Maybe he’ll get a summer job, buy a car. Earn a college scholarship. Learn to be a mechanic and get his own shop. Marry his high school sweetheart.

Deep down, however, he knows it’s just a daydream. Temporary. He can’t stay, much as he wishes he could. He needs to get back to Sammy. Without Sammy, he’s nothing, and this fantasy world he’s spinning is just that—a desperate fabrication.

When Sammy does the leaving, he takes Dean’s identity with him.

Dean falls deeper into his father’s mold, clinging to any sense of self. Hiding what he is in plain sight. Juggling false identities and carefully not thinking about when the last time even was that he spoke his real name aloud. Not even bothering to sleep some nights because it’s easier to just move on to the next job, be someone else entirely by the time the sun comes up.

Then John disappears, and Dean careens wildly without his last remaining tether. Work doesn’t stop the tide of doubts. Sex binds him to his skin for only a night, two at the most. Food and music remind him what humanity is supposed to feel like but offer no guidance on how to hold on to it. At the worst of everything, he spends three days locked in a motel room with a case of beer and a dime bag. But the dissociation scares him so badly that he throws himself back on the road, baking himself sober under the Arizona sun on a Chupacabra hunt.

And so he goes grabbing for the only lifeline he’s ever had.

He’ll never forgive himself from dragging his brother back into the life Sam has always hated. But Dean is self-aware enough to know he’d do the same thing over again, if given the chance.

It’s not any easier this time around, lord no. The man sitting next to him might as well be a stranger— _wants_ to be a stranger. Constantly reminding Dean that he’s nothing more than dad’s perfect soldier, a puppet with John Winchester’s hand shoved up his ass and spouting someone else’s lines. No, not easy, but still better than being on his own.

And he regrets the heartbreak Sam goes through for the sake of Dean’s mission. But in the quietest corners of Dean’s mind, he’ll admit that this is better. Just him and Sammy against the monsters. He’s never felt more real.

Take care of Sammy. Whatever it takes. Even if that means killing.

Even if that means dying.

Even if that means living. (Sorry, Carmen, it’s not you, it’s me.)

He likes to tell himself that the decision was simple. His soul for Sam’s life is no decision at all. He needs to believe he wouldn’t have hesitated even if he’d truly understood what was coming.

Does it count as a lie if nothing else is true?

Hell burrows deep and breaks reality from within. Not all at once, no. Slowly, one eroded crack at a time, so he can watch every last bit flake away. He stops being Dean Winchester, whatever that actually meant. The tin soldier melted down to scrap and recast in another mold. He becomes Alistair’s creature, a puppet made all the more pathetic when it clutches its own strings.

Life after hell makes so much less sense than it did before because he no longer understands what the point of it all was—death, sacrifice, all of it was supposed to serve a purpose, but how can anything make sense if even death proves impermanent.

In the end, none of it really matters. He can endure because it’s all temporary. _He_ is temporary. Maybe another ten years at this game before he blips out like so many other hunters before him, killed saving a world that doesn’t even know he exists and won’t remember him when he’s gone. No trace, no artifacts, not even a body left to rot in a hole somewhere. Nothing but ashes.

And then he meets an angel.

Castiel, angel of the Lord, who took hold of Dean’s soul as if it were something tangible, something real. Whose unwavering gaze and intrusive presence settle on his flesh like an inexplicable claim.

Castiel’s demands have a way of making Dean feel as if he’s standing at the center of the world. It’s a heady sensation, and he pours another drink and pretends that’s the cause of his rosy-faced daze.

Of course, everything goes to shit soon after.

God. Prophecies. Destiny.

Divine players telling him to consent to his own destruction so that someone else’s reality can take over.

Story of his life.

How much is free will even worth, if the enemy lines all the shots up for you? If beings, more powerful and knowing than he can ever comprehend, all tell him that his fate is inevitable.

Dean chooses, and he loses. He refuses to choose, and he loses. The world is fucked no matter what he does. The family he built his foundation on—nothing but lies and secrets that his worldview is too brittle to absorb. All along, the universe laughs at him, taunting him for daring to believe he plays a greater role than an ant in the cosmic grit of heaven’s sandbox.

And still he fights on, following his prime directive, because it’s the only thing he was taught to do.

Because Sam still needs him.

And because there’s Cas. A terrifying, exasperating, fascinating facsimile of a man who opens Dean’s eyes up to what it actually means to be human. He can’t decide if he’s grateful or not so, again, he fights on.

He fights until it breaks him.

Until his world is ripped from his bleeding, broken hands.

Years later, Sam will make a comment about how grateful he is to Lisa and Ben, for keeping Dean whole and sane after Stull Cemetery. For giving him a chance at living a _real_ life.

Dean will smile and change the subject. Because no, it’s not a lie if nothing else is true.

As the battle spirals wider like an exploding galaxy, the stakes getting higher, the wounds cutting deeper, Dean loses more of his fingerhold on reality. More secrets, more lies. More plot twists that illustrate how pointless his own actions are.

Purgatory is almost paradise, in that regard.

Purgatory is simple, pure, direct. Run, kill, hide. The only choice to make is _live_ or _die._ The consequences of every action or inaction are immediate.

Existence has never felt this clear, this concrete. Even partnering up with a vampire comes in black and white terms. _Benny is helping me; therefore, Benny is my friend._ If it weren’t for the phantom pain of Sammy, alone in a different world, Dean would be content to stay in Purgatory until the monsters finally get lucky.

And Cas. Always Cas.

The dumb bastard does all the worst things for the best reasons, desperately struggling in his own way to make sense of everything, and to protect what he loves.

There’s a kinship, there, a recognition of likeness that soothes Dean in a way that nothing else before ever has. Like finally seeing his reflection for the first time in his life. The mirror is cracked and warped by their failings, and the image isn’t comfortable to look at, but there’s a trueness that solidifies the ground under his feet. In the moments when Cas stands beside him, Dean knows who he is, even if he doesn’t always like who that is.

And when Cas isn’t where he should be, Dean will drag him back. Just as he did to Sam, every time. He’s too lost without his shadows, and he’ll stitch those suckers back onto his feet whether they like it or not.

Just, first, he has to find the angel.

How blessedly straightforward that sounds. Find the angel. Find the door. Get home. Beautiful in its simplicity.

Of course, it would go wrong.

Everything is wrong. Sam, Cas, Benny… Demons hunting demons, angels fighting angels, and the world in peril again.

He should never have left Purgatory.

He won’t say it out loud—has to stay strong and focused if he’s going to get the job done—but he wants off this merry-go-round. A home with a room that he doesn’t have to share except when he wants to, a family to cook dinner for, and a wealth of tomorrows to look forward to. A _real_ life, the kind he used to believe he couldn’t have. Not the picket fence and carpool kind of life, no, but some sort of post-hunting, _sleep with the gun in the bedside drawer instead of under the pillow_ version.

After everything, hasn’t he earned it?

For a blink of time, it looks like his dreams might not be so crazy after all. He has a home, and it’s far more awesome than any picket fence could ever be. He has a family, weird and dysfunctional maybe, but when he sits back and takes stock, he sees how big his circle has become—a far cry from two lonely brothers driving down an empty freeway. And sometimes he counts chairs in the library and lets himself wonder if they could fit everyone in there for a Thanksgiving dinner.

But, of course, things keep going wrong. _They_ keep going wrong. And the harder he tries to hold the fraying edges of his world together, the faster it all crumbles apart in his hands. Until… until…

Feathers burned into the dirt like shameful stains.

An empty shell staring at the sky.

Stars twinkling above as heaven mocks them for trying to be more than fantasies.

He really thought he was getting used to this. He’s actually surprised it hurts this much. It’s shocking to find himself still walking and breathing, considering it feels like his soul has been torn from his bones.

And as he cowers in tears, pleading to an uncaring god, heart screaming into an unanswering void, Dean Winchester gives up.

Oh, the soldier marches on. Because what else would he do?

The puppet speaks its lines. The words don’t matter.

Protect Sammy. Kill monsters. Whatever it takes.

So it goes, the ride continues spinning with no chance of hopping off. No point, really. His end will come sooner or later. It’s already written down in neat tidy rows, proof that life is just a scripted illusion, and he might as well play out his part.

Maybe, just maybe, if he plays the part well enough, he’ll be rewarded. Cas returned to him—mostly. Mom. Bobby, Charlie—sort of. A _son_. And, holy shit, where did that come from?

He tries. He tries so fucking hard, but he only makes everything worse.

He raised his eyes from the dirt and learned truths he never wanted to know. He reached for a star and burned up in its flare.

Everything he ever did, tried to do, thought of doing—none of it was real. He was never real.

 _We are_ , Cas insists.

But, of course, that’s what he’d say. It's in the script.


End file.
